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Edited on Sat Jun-26-10 05:41 PM by JDPriestly
Just wait. These measures will help absolutely nothing.
All they are doing is shifting the losses caused by increased productivity (yes, the losses caused by increased productivity which reduces the number of jobs, the total income earned from jobs and hence, the income tax revenue that is lost with the jobs) to the lower middle class and to the poor. That's all these measures combined with the G20 proposals of budget cutting measures will accomplish.
This is more trickle down of poverty and sacrifice and trickle up of wealth and profit. These changes will protect the rich but not the poor or the middle class. They will allow the rich to gamble with the pension money of the poor with even more impunity.
Is it better than nothing?
I thought so at first, even yesterday.
But then I read about the outcome of the G20 Conference. The adoption of austerity measures by governments in Europe and the US will destroy the safety net of the middle and poor classes and relieve the tax burdens on the very, very rich. Everything that is sick and wrong in our society will become worse -- racism, sexism, poverty, political dissension and fanaticism, cheating, fraud, unemployment, injustice, crime even terrorism. This bill does nothing to alter the fact that thus far, the middle class and the poor have paid for the so-called "progress" and technological advances of our time while the rich have cashed in.
Look at reality. Those people who lost their homes. Most of them were middle class. The truly poor could not qualify for loans even from the sleaziest of loan companies.
Those in the middle class who have managed to keep their homes have lost a great deal if not all of the equity value in their homes.
Government services that we in the middle class rely on have been and are being drastically cut back: funding for schools and health care, funding for research on health and safety issues, the little things that benefit all of us but that we take for granted -- like clean water. You think I'm joking. Here in L.A. we had lots of rain (for L.A.) this year, and the Sierras were full of snow. I got that information from a representative of the Department of Water and Power. Yet we are still being charged drought rates for our water. And we are still required to limit our water use according to stringent water rationing rules. Our electricity rates have shot up also.
The costs for the services we need have all risen. Those increases specifically target the poor and the middle class. The rich do not worry about their water bills. I walk past the homes of extraordinarily wealthy people in L.A. and surrounding communities. Their front lawns are full of grass. In my lower middle class area, we have all switched our front lawns to drought resistant plants. We can't afford the water to keep up a lawn. Nothing wrong with drought resistant plants. But where are we when grass is a luxury for the middle class and quite affordable for the rich. Meanwhile our city continues to issue building permits without thinking about the effect that additional housing and other buildings will have on our water and other basic resource needs.
That is why I say this bill is too little too late. The consumer protections in the bill are very nice. But what good does clear language on a loan contract do you if you don't have a job and can't qualify for a loan? What good does it do you if you were the victim of a loan shark two years ago and are unable to make the payments but can't get that loan adjusted or rescinded.
This bill is like so much that is done in D.C. these days. It was written by wealthy people -- members of Congress, lobbyists and secure people -- professors at universities. It is not written from the perspective of those of us who live in the uncertainties of the real middle-class world. It does not attack the basic problems: a) the lack of jobs due to increased productivity and outsourcing and b) the resulting inequities in the distribution of the benefits from the productivity and outsourcing. The rich get all the goodies and then unload their losses on the rest of us. This bill does absolutely nothing to change that.
The consumer protections presume that the consumer has a job and money. Fewer and fewer of us do.
This administration and Congress have not yet comprehended that many of the consumers who were keeping the demand going in the 2000s did not really have the money they were spending. They were borrowing and then playing craps with the money they borrowed. Those of us who did not borrow are now paying for the gambling losses of those who borrowed. More importantly we are paying for the losses of those did the gambling with OUR LIFE SAVINGS. When Goldman Sachs (and other brokerage houses and hedge funds) placed bets on derivatives, for example, that the Dow Jones would fall, they were betting against us, the millions of ordinary middle-aged people who were conned into entrusting our money in mutual funds and the New York Stock Exchange or assured that pur employer was "investing" money for their future pensions.
That money, the savings of the middle class, has not been disgorged from the traders and management of Goldman Sachs and placed back where it belongs -- in the accounts and pockets of the middle-aged folks who have diligently toiled and saved in their 401(K)s and paid into Social Security (premature here, we still have that but not for long) for oh these many years. And this bill does nothing to rectify that injustice.
Elizabeth Warren tried to do her job. If they had put her in charge of the whole mess instead of Bernanke and Geithner, we might now be finding our way out of this situation. In addition to her, there are a couple of others who understand what is at stake and what should be done. Unfortunately, however, they are a tiny minority in Congress and not represented at all in the Obama administration.
The reform looked like a good first step until the news from the G20 was announced. I'm 67 years old. My husband and I never earned a lot. We saved what we could, but at this time, our only cash flow is Social Security. I tell you and all of DU this personal information because I know that most other Americans in my age group and slightly younger are just like me.
Do you realize that if you place $600,000 in the kinds of safe investments (insured banks mostly) that you can trust as a senior, you will probably get, if you are lucky, $7.50 every six months in interest? So other than Social Security, that is your cash flow. You can't even buy a really big pizza for the grandkids with $7.50.
If you earned on the average $50,000 a year and put aside 10% ($5,000) of that each year ($5,000 per year), and never had to withdraw any of it for the inevitable rainy day, it would take you the equivalent of 120 years to save $600,000.
$50,000 per year is maybe a good, average salary today. Teachers in small town America are lucky to make that much. But back when the people who are now in their 60s started working, $50,000 was an enormous amount of money. So, to save $600,000 over the course of a lifetime, people who are now in their 60s have to have been lucky not only in terms of health and employment opportunities, but also in terms of gains on their investments. The stock market rose in apparent value in the 1990s, for example, but the Dow Jones is now about at the level where it was 10 years ago.
What is going to happen next? There will be cuts to Social Security. Meanwhile, mind you, bankers and corporate CEOs and those happy faces you see on network and cable TV will keep their morbidly obese paychecks and bonuses.
No, I am not a happy camper. Too little. Too late. And, I must add, not on target.
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